I’ll give Wayne LaPierre this: The National Rifle Association chief had the courage to step into a heightened national gun debate in the wake of the worst school shooting in U.S. history. And step in it he did. The NRA held a news briefing on Friday, a week after the Newtown, Conn., attack that left more than two dozen people dead, including 20 children. LaPierre’s proposals – armed police officers in schools, a national database of the mentally ill, a re-evaluation of violent-themed video games, movies and music – drew the reactions one could predict. Gun opponents called his suggestions “shamefully inadequate” while advocates praised them as “an immediate, constructive solution.”

Don’t look to this blog for a treatise on the Second Amendment and gun control. But I will give a few thoughts about the NRA’s public relations approach.

If the NRA wanted to limit news coverage, which is almost certain, it chose the best day to do it – the Friday before Christmas. By doing so, the organization reclaimed its part of the discussion and reassured its base without exposing itself too much. It expressed sympathy for the victims’ families, proposed a course of action and still underscored its opposition to gun control. To that extent, it’s a masterful strategy.

But then the NRA’s message got muddied with LaPierre’s defensive, condescending tone. He ladled blame on Hollywood, the mentally ill and the news media. He also offered a dose of paranoia, warning that the next schoolyard massacre is imminent and only “a good guy with a gun” can stop it.

LaPierre is correct to point out the responsibility for gun violence is much broader than just guns. But the fact remains that most Americans are concerned about relatively easy access to firearms, especially after this year’s high-profile shootings, and they want to have a dialogue about it. LaPierre seemed unwilling to acknowledge that. In effect, he said the NRA will dictate the dialogue, not enter into it.

Thus the NRA lost any chance of presenting itself as a concerned group of fellow citizens, sympathetic to the victims and willing to work with others to find a mutually agreeable solution.

As one of the most successful lobby groups in America, buoyed by strong and vocal supporters, the NRA might not care about good public relations. Certainly that’s their right.

But I’ve been in this business long enough to know that no organization, regardless of its size and power, should underestimate or disrespect a base united by a common vision.

Especially when that vision is summoned by the murder of innocent children.

It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving. —Mother Teresa Just in time for the giving season, a study from Reputation Institute has corporate social responsibility folks feeling more like Scrooge than Santa. The 2012 CSR RepTrak 100 Study found that CSR programs are not creating the public goodwill companies expect. Of 47,000 people surveyed, 60 percent said they weren’t sure if companies really are good corporate citizens. Four percent said corporations weren’t to be trusted, well, ever. And not one company ranked tops in CSR perception in 15 global markets involved in the survey. Not all was gloom and doom. Microsoft garnered the most positive vibes of the 100 companies in the study. Dan Bross, Microsoft’s senior director of citizenship and public affairs, told Forbes, “Our CSR efforts have a direct and positive impact on people in our own backyard and around the world, and in turn, their ongoing engagement with us contributes to Microsoft’s business success.” And yet that’s not the conclusion Reputation Institute drew from the survey’s results. “Companies are mismanaging their CSR investments,” said Kasper Nielsen, executive partner of the Institute. “They are not applying the same rigor to these investments as they do to their other core business priorities. They are not linking CSR to their business strategy, but instead treating it as a separate initiative and investment.” He’s right on that point. As someone who has worked in the corporate contributions realm, I understand the value of connecting social responsibility to a company’s strategic focus. It allows the company to have a meaningful impact through targeted giving and engagement. But I did find Mr. Nielsen’s next comment a bit disturbing: “You do CSR as part of your reputation management strategy to drive business growth, customer loyalty, and employee alignment.” He’s not wrong, just incomplete. The problem with making reputation and business success the only drivers for corporate social responsibility is that people see right through it. This insincerity – I’ll call it “cynical CSR” – fools no one. The survey proves that. I have a hunch this is where the “mismanagement” is happening. Companies that bestow their largesse for the sake of headlines, grip-and-grins and most-admired lists will continue to struggle with a wary, distrustful public. Those who are good stewards of their resources and activities, focusing on where they can do the most good most effectively, with openness and sincerity, will earn the reputations they desire.

It’s sad when a company forgets that the term “public relations” starts with the word “public” – that is, people. An appalling example of such a lapse emerged this week when banking giant Citigroup announceda restructuring and cost-cutting plan that included 11,000 layoffs. Take a moment to click the link and read the news release. I hope this winds up in every future PR textbook to teach how not to write a news release.Nowhere does the release express any support for the people affected. There are 717 words in the release, not counting the nobody-ever-reads-this financial disclaimer at the bottom. Not one word is dedicated to the thousands of employees and families whose lives are about to be upended. No expression of empathy, no promise to ease the transition, not even an acknowledgement of the pain these people face. There are, however, lots of self-congratulatory words about how this brooming benefits Citigroup’s bottom line.Euphemisms run amok. Full disclosure: At times in my career I’ve used so-called “softer” words in news releases to describe these kinds of business changes, usually for good reasons. Eliminating positions doesn’t always mean laying off people; a lot of reductions come from attrition or not filling vacant jobs. But we all know there aren’t 11,000 vacant positions at Citigroup, and attrition isn’t going to be the main driver in this restructuring. So this release is peppered with words like “repositioning actions” and “simplifying our operations” and a new one in my experience, “optimized consumer footprint.”This release was written for (or perhaps by) Citigroup’s Finance and Legal people, not for the news media. I pity the time-strapped reporter who had to wade through this swamp. It’s dense and non-informative. Or perhaps I should direct greater sympathy to the poor PR soul at Citigroup who started out with a good draft that was crisp, informative and empathetic, only to see it gutted by non-writers who think they get paid by the syllable. I won’t criticize Citigroup’s business decision to, ahem, “reposition” itself. I don’t know the factors that drove that decision. And let’s face it, sometimes layoffs are a sad, painful reality in the business world . But Citigroup did no favors for itself nor any other corporation by issuing such a foggy, insensitive piece of garbage like this news release. It merely affirms the opinion of every person who thinks big business cares nothing for its employees and every reporter who thinks PR departments exist solely to obfuscate. Far worse, it crushes real people beneath its “optimized consumer footprint.”